Jesus was “The Gift Beyond Compare” because He gently beckons us to The Love Beyond Reason! For the first time ever or since This Wise Man Who attracted followers where ever He went did so because He was one of them, He healed them despite themselves and most importantly He healed their God image which was in desperate need of His touch!

“Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree growing in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it but did not find any. So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, ‘For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?’” – Luke 13:6-7

There were lots of wise men before Jesus and there have been lots since But what made Jesus different was, is and always will be His uncompromising teaching of Love. Love!

God Is Love! Someone who follows God therefore is a Lover learner and not just any Love but Perfect Love and that Love cast out ALL fear!

God prior to the arrival of Christ was an inauthentic, distant, vindictive old policeman that you had better shut up and pay for your own stupidity and IF you live in the exact way of the religious leaders prescription you just might win His smile!

Sound familiar? If you are a history student you will see this idea throughout most of church history and at times in an extremism that had all Hell celebrating gleefully!

In this passage as in many others Jesus was giving the prescription for Heaven on earth! Remember this was right after yesterday’s passage in “The Ever Confusing and Confounding Jesus – 3” where Jesus left a stern warning that legalism was Not the way to the Father!

At this point I would like to ask you the reader a question, does a tree try to “do” what a tree does or is it part of what it IS?

You see Jesus taught “Being verbs” because He knew choosing Him as The Path to The Father was a state of Being and Not doing – and yet still today the majority of people bearing His name will miss this completely! Why? For the same reason they always have – it’s a wide and broad road that will comfortably rock someone to spiritual sleep because they check all the religious boxes with as little honesty as possible!

It is a narrow, rocky and challenging path that calls for brutal honesty But the Good News – The GREAT NEWS is that in our failings HE steps up and IS Glorified because His Love, THE ONLY LOVE BEYOND HUMAN REASON – Still Loves us in spite of ourselves and the demonic potholes that are thrown into our lives!

One reason I call depression at an early age one of my greatest blessings is because it taught me how utterly frail I am, my own sucked-ness if you will and In that the Amazing thing – HE STILL LOVES me!

The growth for a tree like you and me planted in the fertile soil of Christ, fertilized by each moment of honest openness we gaze into the mirror of our own imperfection and watered by the still cool waters of His Eternal Love that gently grows us to Him; the growth Is and always will be a greater acceptance of others failings and Love for the unlovable!